Leanne Simpson is a writer and academic of Mississauga Nishnaabeg ancestry with a PhD from the University of Manitoba. She is the editor of Lighting the Eighth Fire: The Liberation, Resurgence & Protection of Indigenous Nations and This is an Honour Song: Twenty Years Since the Blockades (with Kiera Ladner). Leanne is the author of Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence (Arbeiter Ring) and The Gift Is in the Making, a re-telling of traditional stories, forthcoming Spring 2013 (Debwe Series, Highwater Press). Her first collection of short stories, Islands of Decolonial Loveis forthcoming from Arbeiter Ring Fall 2013. www.leannesimpson.ca

Entries by Leanne Simpson

Like many others on Tuesday night, I watched the live stream of Missouri prosecutor Robert McCulloch delivering what was clearly a public relations campaign, justifying the grand jury's decision not to indict white police officer Darren Wilson in the murder of 18-year-old Michael Brown.

In the mid-1990s I moved to Mi'gma'gi to go to graduate school. I was expecting to learn about juvenile Atlantic salmon on the Miramichi River. I was naive and misguided. Fortunately for me, the Mi'kmaq people saw that in me and they taught me something far more profound. I did...

Anishinaabe culture, like many other Indigenous cultures, holds children in the highest regard. We recognize that children see and experience the world differently than adults and we honour these experiences. We cherish children because they are gifts from the spirit world, and many of...

On May 22nd, members of the Tsawout (SȾÁUTW) nation, with support from the Songhees and the other local WSÁNEĆ nations, including Tsartlip (WJOȽEȽP), Pauquachin (BOḰEĆEN), Tseycum (WSIKEM), Malahat (MÁLEXEȽ) and allied supporters from the Greater Victoria community, led an action to reclaim the original name of PKOLS, now known as...

A year ago, after the community of Attawapiskat had been dragged through the racist lens of the media for more than a month, I began to write about the situation. I wrote two pieces. One that was published in Briarpatch magazine that was political, and one that was...